Dress for you

Blue Flowers!

Mina sent me a link to this *great* fabric store, . They have a walk-in-and-look around store in NC, and a click-around store at that link right there. They also have blue roses fabric, and I am a gaping, open-mouthed sucker for blue roses. I don't know what it is. "They're roses — and they're BLUE!" I swear I don't like other unusually blue things. I never drank (well, neither did anyone else) and I hate that those blue raspberry Slurpees have driven out Coke Slurpees in finer 7-11s and movie theatres everywhere. It's just blue roses that I like. (Although, just thinking "blue flowers" gets that Dr. Octagon song into my head, which more of a side effect than a bonus.)

Make Me! seems to post new fabric all the time … seriously, Mina just sent this link a couple days ago and they already had new stuff when I went to write this up. They're in a part of NC that has/had a lot of textile mills, so they keep turning up more stuff. (Being from NC myself, I have a feeling I know exactly what garages, garden sheds, disused tobacco barns, and attics the retired millworkers might have kept the leftovers that came home from the mills. Covered in kudzu, the Carolina-blue or Wolfpack-red pickup parked outside …)

Blue roses…an interesting aside is that milliners report that hats with blue flowers (roses too) don’t sell well. Isn’t that just weird, when blue roses are sooooo cool looking, both pop culturally AND climatically? Add a black element to blue roses and I think it is highly sophisticated.

OH! This fuels my desire for a weekend get-away to NC!!!I have a book that lists yarn shops around the US… Does anyone know of such a resource for fabric stores? I think someone used to sell a “map” with fabric stores marked. This would save many a hotel phone book from being molested by me!On an unrelated topic… I made myself the McCall’s Duro dress, love it, wore it on vacation… with ankle socks and sneakers. What a bad choice, but my feet hurt from hiking! I don’t advise said combo!

STOP STEALING MY THOUGHTS!!! Now we both have to believe that even if God doesn’t exist, some magical ESP-separated-at-birth type power must exist because I loved that confession post, and the atheist post, and BLUE FLOWERS and I ALWAYS get that Dr Octagon/Kool Keith/etc names song in my head. Oh and the whole dress-wearing thing, that too.

I have to confess I have stolen my mother’s sewing machine on a semi-permanent basis and made five dresses and bought more than 10 vintage patterns since I started reading this blog. I blame you and your too-awesome- not- to -emulate attitude on dresses and style. Thanks.

I had had a chunk of pale blue cotton with some very pretty dark blue roses on it; I forget what its initial destination was, but I wound up making a peasant blouse, which I wore for a couple of years. Then one day I looked at the remnant of fabric I had left, which was about 2 1/2 yards, and said, “Hunh!” I cut out a half-circle skirt, stitched it onto the bottom of the peasant blouse, ran a piece of elastic through the resulting waistline seam, and instant dress-with-blue-flowers!(Pssst … that makes a really good Fast Sneaky Dress, by the way – if you have a favorite top or blouse pattern, get enough fabric for that plus 2 1/2 yards; end the blouse at waistlevel-plus-seam-allowance, stitch on the skirt, stitch the edges of the seam allowance together, run a bit of elastic through, and put a belt over it [or not]. The fact that it has very few/no gathers over the hips makes it very forgiving for those of us who could use that kind of forgiveness.)